A continuing trend in the electronics, automobile, avionics, and spacecraft industries, among other industries, is to create more and more compact apparatuses leading to an increase in the power density of such apparatuses. Accordingly, as the power density of such apparatuses increases, there may be a corresponding increase in thermal energy to be dissipated for operability of such apparatuses. Notably, the size of such apparatuses, as well as the systems in which they are implemented, may impose additional constraints on the size of heat transfer devices used to transport such heat away.
Thus, the increase in power density of high-heat flux devices can make demands on heat transfer devices more acute. This additional demand on the ability to transport heat is further exacerbated by generally smaller dimensions utilizable for such heat transfer devices. Some examples of high-heat flux devices include microprocessors, graphics processing units, power handling semiconductors, lasers, programmable logic devices, motherboards, and digital signal processors, among other known high-heat flux devices.
Conventional heat transfer devices include passage ways by which a media, such as fluid, is flowed to transport heat. As a result of an increase in the amount of thermal energy to be transported, complexity associated with heat transfer devices has increased. This increase in complexity has generally led to an increase in hydrodynamic losses associated with fluid passing through such heat transfer devices. The increase in hydrodynamic losses has generally resulted in an increase in the consumption of energy for operation of the heat transfer devices themselves.
Accordingly, it would be desirable and useful to provide means for enhancing heat transfer but without the degree of hydrodynamic losses associated with prior heat transfer devices.